Land Acknowledgements and the 1st Amendment

Like many other Americans, Curmie is something of a mongrel in terms of ethnicity.  He’s never done a formal genealogical study of his ancestry, but assuming he was not led astray by parents and grandparents, his heritage includes representatives from at least six western European countries… and one Native American tribe.  His paternal grandfather would have been the last in the line to be able to claim tribal membership, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t something there.

As Curmie suggested, channeling George Carlin, back on the 4th of July, it’s sort of strange to take pride in something that is totally beyond one’s control.  Curmie isn’t “proud to be an American,” although he’s reasonably content, current government notwithstanding.  Pretty much the same could be said for his First Nations heritage: he thinks it’s kinda cool, but that’s as far as it goes.

Of course, his status is somewhat in-between.  He’s got more Native ancestry than most folks, but to suggest that he is in any way part of that world, part of that culture, would be silly at best.  Is his position, then, liminal? compromised? intermediary?  Whatever.  Does this give Curmie a slightly different perspective on questions regarding land acknowledgements, which have become something of a lightning rod in both directions of late?  I dunno.  Maybe?  At least it gives Curmie a bit more than an average person’s interest in the phenomenon.

There are those who would argue that these pre-event speeches, additions to syllabi, etc., are an appropriate recognition of history.  Others think they’re no more than self-congratulatory virtue-signaling.  The issue splits more or less on ideological lines, with liberals in favor and conservatives opposed.  On this one, though, Curmie leans rather more to the conservative view.

One particular aspect stands out in Curmie’s mind: The Man, however embodied, always wants to tell everyone what to do.  A few years ago, Curmie was (he thinks) the only faculty director at his university not to include a land acknowledgement at the beginning of his shows.  He does confess to taking that stand at least as much to resist conforming to liberal dogma as for thinking the whole thing rather inane.  And there was pressure: the tone of “you don’t have to…” made it clear that the politically wise choice was rather obvious.

A year or two ago, after Curmie had retired, at least from production work, his university was absorbed into the gaping maw of the University of Texas system.  Word came down from somewhere on high—the governor, the state legislature, the politically-appointed Regents, the Higher Education Coordinating Board, the system chancellor, the university president… somewhere—that land acknowledgements were now banned at state universities.  They’re political, you see, so we’re going to use our political power to prevent you from using yours… or your 1st Amendment rights. 

It’s probably not very surprising that after over four decades in the classroom, Curmie is likely to side with the professoriate rather than the administration except in truly exceptional cases.  So it is—well, mostly, at least—with the story that prompts this essay: the case of University of Washington computer science professor Stuart Reges (seen above), who just got a $600,000 settlement from the University of Washington for their retaliation against him for criticizing the land acknowledgement policy and including a parody version in his syllabus.

Ok, let’s go back to whether this all started.  Back in the fall semester of 2021, UW’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering issued a “best practices” document which included an “Indigenous Land Acknowledgement”: “The University of Washington acknowledges the Coast Salish peoples of this land, the land which touches the shared waters of all tribes and bands within the Suquamish, Tulalip and Muckleshoot nations.”  (The document seems to have been online back then, but the links no longer work.)

Despite what it says in an article in the not-exactly-politically-neutral Campus Reform, it does not appear that faculty were required to include the passage in their syllabi.  According to a letter from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE’s name before changing the latter two words of their title to “and Expression”), however, if they mentioned the topic at all, they had to use precisely the version approved by the administration. 

Reges, who opposes DEI initiatives in general and apparently this one in particular, didn’t follow that policy.  He distributed an email opposing land acknowledgements and included the following statement in his syllabus: “I acknowledge that by the labor theory of property the Coast Salish people can claim historical ownership of almost none of the land currently occupied by the University of Washington.”  That, Curmie is told, is based on John Locke’s theory of property rights.  It’s been over a half century since Curmie read any Locke, and he remembers little if any it, so he’s going to have to accept that analysis.  It doesn’t really matter, anyway.

The university’s response was what in Curmie’s day was called a conniption.  Allen School Director Magdalena Balazinska described Reges’s parody as “not related to course content,” “inappropriate,” and “offensive,” and demanded that he remove it.  He refused.  So the university changed his syllabus anyway, apologized in an email to students which claimed Reges’s commentary “dehumanizes and demeans Indigenous people,” and opened a competing section of the same course scheduled at the same time. 

OK, let’s rate those claims.  “Not related to course content”: true.  Of course, land acknowledgments of any description aren’t related to course content in any class except perhaps for a handful of examples in history or the social sciences… certainly not in computer science.  Spewing the party line would, of course, not have been a problem for the administration.  “Inappropriate”: yeah, at least a little.  “Offensive”: nope.  “Dehumanizes and demeans Indigenous people”: give me a fucking break.  And don’t get Curmie started on the sense of smug superiority that fairly drips off the page.

Exactly why Reges put the fake land acknowledgement on his syllabus isn’t clear.  Perhaps he foresaw the opportunity to sue if he were punished for it.  Maybe he just wanted his proverbial 15 minutes of fame.  Or he regarded land acknowledgments as inane, and he couldn’t stand yet another politically-inspired edict forbidding him from being political.

Look, Reges is a conservative, opposed to anything in the general vicinity of DEI, and land acknowledgements are in Curmie’s opinion one of the sillier versions of that phenomenon.  It’s difficult to see how Indigenous folks would see them as anything but a hollow promise of support, provided, of course, that no actual action would be required.  Curmie understands Reges’s frustration, is not above a little snark himself, and does appreciate the impulse to throw a spanner in the works.  Still, his comment about Bret Weinstein, the Evergreen State prof who questioned a radical change to a campus tradition a few years ago might apply here, as well: “Curmie admires his stance against thought control, but isn’t so sure he’d want him as a colleague.”  Different reasons; same conclusion.

Anyway, FIRE got into the act rather quickly.  Three days after that organization wrote to the university, Reges raised the visibility of the case by doing an interview with Campus Reform and publishing a piece there titled “REGES: Defy the nonsense of indigenous land acknowledgments.” (Curmie doesn’t know if Reges wrote the headline, although he suspects not).

A few months later FIRE sued the university on Reges’s behalf, arguing that the investigation and punishment constituted viewpoint discrimination and were therefore a 1st Amendment violation, and that the policy itself was overbroad and unconstitutionally vague.  Nearly two years after that, in May of 2024, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington ruled in favor of the university, citing Pickering v. Board of Education as precedent.  That’s particularly interesting because that case was ruled in favor of the teacher involved over the school district.

That 1968 Supreme Court ruling affirmed the rights of teachers to comment on matters of public concern, provided only that they did not knowingly or recklessly make false statements.  Justice Thurgood Marshall advocated a “balance between the interests of the teacher, as a citizen, in commenting upon matters of public concern and the interest of the State, as an employer, in promoting the efficiency of the public services it performs through its employees.”

Reges and FIRE appealed the district court’s decision, and in December of 2025 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit overturned the lower court’s ruling and remanded “for further proceedings.”  Shortly thereafter, the university decided to settle rather than prolong the process; the details of the agreement were announced earlier this month.

There are a couple of things Curmie finds intriguing here.  Foremost among them is where Curmie himself stands on the two central issues of the case.  He is something of a liberal, after all, so one might reasonably expect him to go along with the university’s land acknowledgement policy.  He does not; he thinks that policy is both silly and authoritarian.

One might also anticipate that Curmie, after an entire career in the classroom, would want professors to have absolute control over their syllabi.  Actually, though, this is where things get sticky.  Yes, faculty should be able to determine what gets taught in their courses; those decisions should never be questioned by some administrator from outside the discipline or state legislator or whoever.  But that’s a matter of course content, which of course is what the right-wingers want to control rather than acceding to the professional expertise of the person in the classroom.

And it’s certainly true that Curmie has expressed disdain for what he regarded as stupid ideas propagated by administrators, politicians and the like.  He’s even done that in class if it was relevant to the coursework or to the efficient functioning of the class.  But when we start talking about syllabi, we begin to head into a different territory.  In Curmie’s adopted state of Texas, all syllabi at state universities have to be posted online, accessible within three clicks.  That makes them into something like public documents disseminated by the university.  That the administration ought to have some control over what goes out over its name doesn’t seem unreasonable.

Of course, Washington may not have a rule like that, but the general principle still applies.  Yes, the whole land acknowledgement business is rather dumb, but Reges was in fact being deliberately provocative with his little foray into satire, some students were indeed disturbed, and to the extent that the university may appear to be endorsing his commentary, there’s a problem.  Is Reges acting as an individual, or as a representative of the school?  That’s a tough one, frankly.  Curmie therefore regards the court’s decision as a net positive, but not without its downside.

The other item worth mentioning is that those often paranoid cries from the right that some story isn’t being covered by the mainstream press are actually pretty accurate in this case.  As far as Curmie can tell, there are no stories on the major networks or in the big-name newspapers about the settlement.  Yes, FIRE talks about it, but there’s not even a story that Curmie can find on PEN America, who filed an amicus brief for Reges when the case was before the Ninth Circuit.  There’s a brief piece on Inside Higher Ed (it’s behind a paywall, but it’s there), but nothing in the Chronicle of Higher Education.  Yahoo did have a story, and it looks like some kind of commentary in the Washington Post about the cost of humorlessness, but it’s behind a paywall.

There are stories all over the right-wing outlets, though: Fox News, Seattle Red, Campus Reform, Minding the Campus… you get the picture.  It would seem to Curmie that the general population, not just the conservative echo chamber, ought to know about this stuff.  But now, at least, you know, Gentle Reader.